The benefits of cooking food, including vegetables, with steam include accelerating the cooking process, moisturizing the food during the cooking process, and preserving flavor, vitamins, and nutrients. Additionally, cooking with steam results in a more homogeneously cooked food item having an appearance that appeals to the senses.
Vegetables can be cooked in a number of ways, two of the most common being through steaming or roasting. Consumers currently steam vegetables on the cooktop or in the microwave using special containers required for steaming. Due to the limited capacity of cooktops, it is difficult to steam large amounts of vegetables at one time. Microwaves can unevenly heat the vegetables, resulting in uneven cooking. The consumer must also be careful of the steam escaping from the container.
Roasted vegetables are currently prepared in an oven to achieve some browning of the vegetables. During the browning process, also known as the Maillard reaction, reducing sugars and amino acids react at temperatures usually in the range of about 300-500° F. and break down relatively large, dull tasting molecules into relatively small, volatile molecules having a pleasing taste and odor. Thus, the browning process gives the vegetables a desired flavor in addition to changing the color of the surface of the vegetables. Browning occurs only at the surface because the moisture in the vegetables prevents the interior from reaching temperatures required for the Maillard reactions to take place. The browning Maillard reaction, however, cannot occur at the surface of the vegetables in an overly humid cooking cavity. As a result, vegetables are typically roasted without the addition of moisture, which often results in over-drying or burning of the vegetables if the consumer is not watchful.
Over the years, cooks have developed various kinds of home remedies for steaming vegetables in an oven such as inserting a bath of water and/or ice cubes into the cooking cavity, for providing steam into the cooking cavity. For convenience and to eliminate problems with consistency and timing of steam introduction associated with these home remedies, some contemporary household ovens incorporate an automated steam generating system that introduces steam into the cooking cavity of the oven.
Many of these ovens rely on the consumer for controlling the activation and operation of the steam generating system which leads to inconsistent results. It would be helpful to the user for ovens to include automated programs dedicated to steaming and roasting vegetables to ensure that appropriate amounts of steam are introduced into the cooking cavity at appropriate times during the cooking cycle so that the vegetables are properly cooked and that the benefits of cooking with steam are fully realized.